NEWS

Under orders to trim hundreds of millions of dollars from its budget, the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday released a final list of 149 air traffic control towers that it will close at small airports around the country starting early next month.

A shadow of a different kind is hanging over Punxsutawney Phil.
Authorities in still-frigid Ohio have issued an "indictment" against the famed groundhog, who predicted an early spring when he didn't see his shadow after emerging from his lair in western Pennsylvania on Feb. 2.

Starkville School District Superintendent Lewis Holloway told public stakeholders Thursday it is better to negotiate a school merger bill now than have a future measure without local input, according to unofficial strategic planning session minutes released by the district.

Jason Spears, vice-president of the Columbus Municipal School District's Board of Trustees, announced Friday that he is resigning as board president of Link'd Young Professionals. He sent a letter to the Chamber of Commerce Thursday, informing them of his decision.

State legislators and local public education stakeholders are in a hurry-up-and-wait situation after House and Senate leaders failed to establish a conference committee for an Oktibbeha-Starkville school merger bill.

Ka-ching! The cash register may be on its final sale.
Stores across the country are ditching the old-fashioned, clunky machines and having salespeople -- and even shoppers themselves -- ring up sales on smartphones and tablet computers.

Saplings from the chestnut tree that stood as a symbol of hope for Anne Frank as she hid from the Nazis for two years in Amsterdam are being distributed to 11 locations in the United States as part of a project that aims to preserve her legacy and promote tolerance.

The two men in white embraced and showed one another the deference owed a pope in ways that surely turned Vatican protocol upside down: A reigning pope telling a retired one, "We are brothers," and insisting that they pray side-by-side during a date to discuss the future of the Catholic Church.

When the president of Ohio's state school board posted her opposition to gun control, she used a powerful symbol to make her point: a picture of Adolf Hitler. When a well-known conservative commentator decried efforts to restrict guns, he argued that if only Jews in Poland had been better armed, many more would have survived the Holocaust.

The man suspected of shooting a United States Postal worker has been caught. Authur Lee "Slim" Whitfield, 17, of Kalamazoo, Mich., was taken into custody just after 2 p.m. Friday afternoon by deputies with the Lowndes County Sheriff's Department. He will be formally charged Monday with aggravated assault and armed robbery.

The city's three mayoral candidates spoke Thursday at Lion Hills Golf Club, outlining their campaign platforms and visions for the city of Columbus. Incumbent mayor Robert Smith is being challenged by Republican Glenn Lautzenhiser and Independent Bo Jarrett in the June 4 municipal election.

Ten years before he would take over as head of the dairy science department at Mississippi State University, and 30 years before the dairy science building would bear his name, professor Fredrick Herman Herzer had an idea:
Maybe we should make some cheese.

Democrats controlling the Senate appear on track to pass their first budget in four years, promising a second, almost $1 trillion round of tax increases on top of more than $600 billion in higher taxes on the wealthy enacted in January.